Man, 2020, right? Specifically, May 2020. That was a weird time for everyone, locked down, wondering what the heck was coming next. For me, stuck at home, suddenly with a lot of quiet time on my hands after my old gig went sideways with the whole pandemic thing, my brain just wouldn’t shut off. I’d been fiddling with this idea for a while, just sketches in a notebook, but that May, it really started to chew at me. I called it “Project Virgo” in my head, mainly ’cause I’m a Virgo, and I figured, if anyone was gonna overthink something into existence, it’d be me.
The whole thing started because I was seeing so many small businesses, places I loved, just struggling to get online, or do it well. Their websites were clunky, their social media was like a ghost town. And I kept thinking, there has to be a simpler way for these folks to put themselves out there without breaking the bank on a big agency. So, “Virgo” was essentially my crazy plan to build a super straightforward, no-frills platform for local shops to just, you know, exist digitally, gracefully. Not fancy, just functional and easy to manage for someone who’s busy running a butcher shop or a flower store.
I started by just mapping out what these small businesses actually needed. I wasn’t going to build some wild e-commerce giant. Nah. I talked to a few friends who owned small places, a bakery, a little bookstore. Asked them what their biggest headaches were. They pretty much all said the same thing: getting good photos online, updating menus or stock without calling a “web guy” every time, and just generally looking legit. So, I grabbed a big whiteboard, which I usually only use for grocery lists, and just started scribbling. Hours melted away.
Next up, I had to figure out what tech I was actually gonna use. Now, I’m no coding wizard, but I’ve poked around enough to know my way around some basic stuff. I wasn’t looking for anything cutting-edge or super complex. I just wanted something solid and stable. I dug up some old notes from a few workshops I’d taken years back, dusted off a few old books, and started playing with some open-source content management systems. I probably tried three or four different ones, installing them on a cheap little server I’d cobbled together in my spare room. Each one had its quirks. Some were too complicated; others felt too limited. It was a lot of trial and error, a lot of deleting everything and starting over. My wife thought I was nuts, muttering to myself in front of a screen at 2 AM.
Building out the core features was a slog, let me tell you. I was basically teaching myself as I went. I spent countless hours watching YouTube tutorials, pausing, rewinding, trying to figure out why my buttons weren’t lining up or why my text boxes looked janky. I wanted the admin side to be super intuitive, so anyone could just hop on, upload a photo, type a new special, and hit save. No hidden menus, no confusing jargon. This meant building out simple forms, a very basic image uploader, and a clear text editor. I must’ve re-written the image upload script five times before I got it to work reliably without crashing the whole thing. Frustrating? Absolutely. But every time I nailed a small piece, it felt like a little victory. I remember punching the air when I finally got a draft post to save and display correctly on a test page. Silly, I know, but it felt huge.
After about three months of this intense, on-and-off work, I had a barebones version of “Virgo” running. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. You could create a business profile, add hours, upload a few pictures, write a little blurb, and even list a few products or services. Crucially, it was all manageable from a super simple dashboard. I hauled my old laptop over to my friend’s bakery and said, “Hey, wanna try this?” He looked at it, squinted, clicked around, and then, his face lit up. He actually uploaded his daily special without calling me. That right there? That was the moment I realized this thing had legs.
What came next for Virgo?
That initial success gave me a kick in the pants. I knew it wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot. The next big hurdle was getting it stable enough for more than one user, then making it look decent. I spent the rest of that year and well into the next just refining, fixing bugs, and, eventually, dabbling with design. I’m no artist, but I learned enough about CSS and basic design principles to make things look clean and professional, not like some Geocities relic. I focused on making it responsive too, because everyone’s on their phones now, right? So, I dove into mobile-first design, figuring out how to make everything look good on a tiny screen. It was another whole new world of learning.
I ended up getting a few more local businesses onboard, mostly through word-of-mouth. My friend from the bakery told his buddy at the flower shop, and soon I had a small, informal user base. Their feedback was gold. They’d tell me, “Hey, this is great, but it’d be awesome if I could do X.” And if it made sense, and fit the simple scope of “Virgo,” I’d try to build it in. It slowly morphed from just a website platform into something more like a local business hub. Nothing huge, just a reliable spot for them to manage their basic online presence.
- Got the basic profile creation down.
- Implemented easy photo uploads, finally.
- Built a simple text editor for daily updates.
- Learned just enough CSS to not make it look awful.
- Figured out mobile responsiveness, mostly.
Looking back at May 2020, sitting there, staring at that blank whiteboard, I never would have guessed where “Project Virgo” would actually take me. It wasn’t about getting rich or building some Silicon Valley behemoth. It was about solving a real problem for real people, and in doing so, I ended up learning a ton about myself and about sticking with something even when it feels impossible. That whole crazy period, just me and my laptop, it really changed how I think about solving problems and what I’m actually capable of. Who knew a global shutdown could kickstart something like that, eh?
